MFDJ 10/28/2021: Lonely Hearts Club Killer

Today’s Pig-like, Blackened Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Harry F. Powers (born Harm Drenth; November 17, 1893 – March 18, 1932) was a Dutch-born American serial killer who was hanged in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Powers lured his victims through “Lonely Hearts” advertisements, claiming he was looking for love, but ultimately murdering them for their money. Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter and its 1955 film adaptation were based on these crimes. Jayne Anne Phillips’s novel Quiet Dell (2013) examined the Powers case anew.

Harm Drenth was born in 1893 in Beerta, in the Netherlands. He immigrated to the United States in 1910 and lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His family came to the U.S. in 1911. Harm moved to West Virginia in 1926.

In 1927, he married Luella Strother, an owner of a farm and grocery store, after responding to her lonely hearts advertisement. Though now married, Powers took out his own lonely hearts advertisements. Many women wrote in response to his advertisement. “Postal records later indicated that replies to Powers’ advertisement poured in at a rate of 10 to 20 letters per day.” Powers constructed a garage and basement at his home in Quiet Dell; the garage was later discovered to be the scene of the murders, of which he was convicted.

After his 1931 arrest, police investigation using fingerprints and photographs revealed that he had been incarcerated for burglary under his birth name in Barron County, Wisconsin in 1921–1922. Although not charged, Powers was suspected of involvement in the 1928 disappearance of Dudley C. Wade, a carpet sweeper salesman with whom he had once worked, and the unsolved murder of a Jane Doe in Morris, Illinois.

Using the alias “Cornelius Orvin Pierson,” Powers began writing letters to Asta Eicher, a widowed mother of three residing in Park Ridge, Illinois. Powers went to visit Eicher and her children—Greta, Harry, and Annabel—on June 23, 1931, and soon left with Eicher for several days. Elizabeth Abernathy cared for the children until she received a letter saying that “Pierson” was going to come pick up the children to join him and their mother. When he arrived, he sent a child to the bank to withdraw money from Eicher’s account. The child returned empty-handed because the signature on the check was forged. Powers and the children then hastily departed. He told neighbors concerned about their disappearance that they were on a trip to Europe.

Who could resist this man???

Some time later, Powers courted Dorothy Pressler Lemke from Northborough, Massachusetts, who was also looking for love through lonely hearts advertisements. He brought her to Iowa to marry her and persuaded her to withdraw $4,000 from her bank account. Lemke did not notice that instead of sending her trunks to Iowa, where Powers claimed to be living, he sent them to the address of “Cornelius O. Pierson” of Fairmont, West Virginia. Asta Eicher, her children, and Dorothy Lemke had disappeared with no explanation.

In August 1931, police began investigating the disappearances of Asta Eicher and her children, beginning with “Pierson”, who was discovered emptying Eicher’s house. They found love letters, which led them to Quiet Dell, where “Pierson” lived under the name Harry Powers with his wife. Powers was arrested and his house in Quiet Dell was searched. Police found the crime scene in four rooms located under Pierson’s garage. Bloody clothing, hair, a burned bankbook and a small bloody footprint of a child were discovered. Citizens of the town began to arrive at the scene to watch the investigation unravel. A 15-year-old bystander informed the sheriff that he had recently helped Powers dig a ditch on his property. The freshly filled-in ditch was then dug up, and the bodies of Asta Eicher, her children, and Dorothy Lemke were uncovered.

Poor Asta Eicher and her children.

Evidence and autopsy results showed that the two girls and their mother were strangled to death while the young boy’s head was beaten in with a hammer. Lemke was the last victim uncovered; she had also been strangled, with a belt still wrapped around her neck. Love letters were found in the trunk of Powers’ automobile. He had written back to many women with the intention of stealing their money and killing them, just as with his most recent victims.

Shortly following his arrest, Powers received two black eyes and bruising, allegedly from falling down a staircase during his questioning. On September 20, 1931, a lynch mob attempting to take Powers from the jail was dispersed with fire hoses and tear gas. Powers was then moved to the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville.

“Tell ’em you fell down a staircase, or else!”

Powers’ five-day trial was held at a local opera house because of the large number of spectators. Numerous witnesses testified to the evidence in Powers’ home, that he had been with the victims and picked up their luggage, and so on; Powers also testified for himself. On December 12, 1931, he was sentenced to death, and he was hanged on March 18, 1932.

Culled from: Wikipedia

So the entire reason I selected this story as a fact is because the next image I was going to share in the New York Noir book features this stunning photo and description of Harry.

BUTCHER OF CLARKSBURG
September 1, 1931
Daily News photo

His pig-like eyes, bruised, blackened by his captors, are the only spots of color in the pasty, cruel face of Harry F. Powers, the heartless Butcher of Clarksburg, as he recites to a detective in his cell the grisly details of how he strangled two women and three pitifully helpless children in his charnel house garage near Clarksburg, W. Va.

Can you imagine if newspapers still used descriptions like that?  What would they have said about the likes of Brian Laundrie?

“His weasel-like face betrays the lack of conscience that only the lowest miscreant possesses…”

 

Arcane Excerpts!

I have an exciting new addition to my Arcane Book Collection!  The Perfect Woman by Mary R. Melendy, M.D., Ph.D. (1903)

Here’s the full title for you:

My cover is illegible but this is what it looks like when it’s in decent condition:

Anyway, I need to share some sage advice from the pages of this remarkable book.

SELF-ABUSE AND ITS EVILS

Self-abuse is practiced among growing girls to such an extent as to arouse serious alarm. Many a girl has been led to handle and play with her sexual organs through the advice of some girl who has obtained temporary pleasures in that way, or, perchance, chafing has been followed by rubbing until the organs have become congested with blood, and in this accidental manner the girl discovered what seem to her a source of pleasure, but which, alas, is a source of misery, and even death.

As in the boy, so in the girl, self-abuse causes an undue amount of blood to flow to those organs, thus depriving other parts of the body of its nourishment, the weakest part first showing the effect of want of sustenance. All that has been said upon this loathsome subject in the chapter for boys might well be repeated here, but space forbids.

Read that chapter again, and know that the same signs which betray the boy, will make known the girl addicted to this vice. The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory, and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly.  [Wow, I feel bad for people who suffered from illness back then – everyone thought they were orgasm addicts! – DeSpair] The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does to herself by yielding to this habit, there is one other reason which appeals to the conscience, and that is, self-abuse is an offense against moral law — it is putting to a vile, selfish use the organs which were given only for a high, sacred purpose.

Let them alone, except to care for them when care is needed, and they may prove the greatest blessing you have ever known. They were given you that you might become a mother, the highest office to which God has ever called one of His creatures. Do not debase yourself and become lower than the beasts of the field.

If this habit has fastened itself upon any one of our readers, stop it now. Do not allow yourself to think about it; give up evil associations, seek pure companions, and go to your mother, older sister, or physician for advice.

And you, mother, knowing the danger that besets your daughters at this critical point, are you justified in keeping silent? Can you be held guiltless if your daughter ruins body and mind because you were too modest to tell her the laws of her being? There is no love that is dearer to your daughter than yours, no advice that is more respected than yours, no one whose warning would be more potent. Fail not in your duty. As motherhood has been your sweetest joy, so help your daughter to make it hers.